I’ve seen pictures of these fancy ceramic heaters Castle Photo Archive but they seem to only exist in old castles. I don’t ever remember seeing one in person. I connect them with eastern and northern Europe. What is the name of these heaters, and does anyone know their history? Were they widespread for a long time or confined to a small area and time in history? Were they only used in grand dwellings, or were they installed in the average house? How did they work?
It looks like a model of masonry heater. Those have air channels inside to absorb heat from the smoke and once heated up they will stay warm for a long time, which makes them ideal for heating large residents. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masonry_heater
they are masonry heater. also called russian, finnish, swedish stove.
still made in new construction today though maybe not as ornate.
the ceramic/masonry has a high heat capacity, it absorbs the high temperature wood burning heat and then slowly radiates a lower temperature heat for a long time.
Looks like a Masonry heater (wikipedia link). The article doesn’t say anything about the time period they were used, but my WAG is from the 17th century through to today. The were widespread in the areas of Europe where homes needed heating for long periods of time and were fairly expensive so not something you’d find in your average dwelling.
The style you showed a picture of were fueled from a servant’s passage behind the wall.
A ceramic stove? They were widespread not only in castles but also normal homes in colder areas before the arrival of central heating, and I still encounter them back in the 80s on some Alpine huts. The advantage is that the warm air is trapped in the hollow pipes and so it keeps the room warm for a much longer time than a simple open fire.
In many old farmers houses, there was a free space behind the wall and the oven, called colloquially “Hölle” (hell). Children and old people could sleep on the bench around the oven and on top of the oven to get a bit more warmth during cold nights. (But if you fell off, you fell into Hell. :))
In the alpine huts, there was a wooden rack around the three sides you could hang wet clothes onto to dry which is really nice, despite the smell of wet wool in the room. We were glad to be warm after hours of hiking through sleet, snow and similar weather.
Hereis an old painting of a simple hut in the Black Forest which has one.
And they haven’t died out by far, rather, are making a come-back with new ways of heating that save energy and money. Whenever the Auer Dult is around (a market), the potters offer not only dishes, but also ceramic tiles to build these ovens with, and people still install them in new houses.
That’s not correct. Although they have a high initial cost, once they are installed in a proper home, the home with the oven is passed on through generations, and each generation needs much less fuel = wood through the winter than with an open fire. Considering that people had to either buy wood or collect leftover twigs, but couldn’t just walk into the woods and hack down a tree (that was forest theft and punished!), and collecting and storing wood for the winter took a lot of time and energy (plus you didn’t know beforehand how long the winter would be - it’s terrible to run out of fuel in mid-winter, and not have money to buy new wood!); so using less fuel was very important and useful.
The other advantage is that unlike an open fire, you don’t need to watch and feed it all the time, but had a warm place to huddle around. In poor families, this was important.
So any halfway well-off farmer who owned a proper house and not only a hut would install one if the winters were hard and cold, and that’s why they are widespread not only in Eastern Europe, but also in the mountains of Germany and other areas.
I saw several of them in the Peterhof in St. Petersburg, built in 1703.
I see that the english Wikipedia article doesn’t mention the origin of the Kachelofen as the German one does. Basically, they developed from a low, half-tube type of baking oven that lenghtened and extended from the kitchen into the living room, and then widened. This had the advantage of being able to heat the living room while the soot and fire and dirt from it stayed in the kitchen. That’s why even in places where no servants were around, many ovens still are fed from behind.
Now if we could just get them to also bring us our paper and slippers.
Masonry heaters are still fairly common in turn-of-the-century buildings in Budapest, for instance. They’re not quite as fancy as the ones pictured in the OP’s link, but they’re the same idea. This is more what they looked like. Or you can see some other examples here, too.
Many thanks for your informative replies! The German wikipedia article is particularly comprehensive, including schematics and history. I had no idea these originated in Germany. Mark Twain even chimes in on the topic. http://www.timelyconstruction.com/?page_id=71
I’ve read the first half of the German article now (It really goes on and on. Did you know that the German Wikipedia is the most comprehensive of all Wikipedias?) and there’s one thing I’m still trying to figure out. The article states that until the 18th century, all of these heaters were made to vent the gasses from the fire through the open door where the wood was placed, usually in the kitchen. Then these gasses were apparently left to wander in search of whatever vent was available, or failing that, through holes in the ceiling and roof. It says that some heaters in the 20th century were still made like this. The article almost made it sound like chimneys weren’t invented until the 18th century! Why didn’t someone make the connection between chimney and wood fired heater before this time?
Ignore for a moment the fact that soot and gas from a fire can be carcinogenic and unhealthy. How the heck did people escape the soot from filtering and ruining the furniture and drapes and what else in the rest of the house? How did they escape carbon monoxide poisoning?
Not an expert, but while chimneys were certainly invented before the 18th century, they weren’t widespread among poor people. They didn’t have drapes, they didn’t have a lot of furniture, and yes, ceilings and walls became blackened with soot over time* (though that would happen in other houses, too, with lots of candles burning for light!)
I don’t think that people didn’t make the connection between smoke and soot, but that a chimney was too much of a bother and expense. In poor countries like Africa, people still don’t have chimneys - that’s why one third of deaths for women and children (who are close to the fire) according to wHO is from smoke- and lung diseases, and why aid organisations want to distribute solar cookers, and teach people how to build ovens that utilize the wood better, to produce less smoke. (But in Mambegu, where my Church has a partnership, they can’T convince people even to build different ovens that would be more effective out of clay. The old men who rule don’t care about the discomforts of the women who tend the fire and cook, after all, and newfangled ideas are dangerous.)
A chimney needs not only to be built by craftsmen, it then has to be swept regularly, or the soot on its wall can cause fire. If you can’t afford the ongoing maintenance, then it’s better to not have one at all.
As for carbon monoxide: I think that mostly comes from coal furnaces, not wood in oven? Also, remember that those houses were far from todays well-insulated and thus sealed houses - they leaked a nice breeze. And the hole where the smoke goes out also lets the fresh air in.
Anecdote: on the farm I once worked they had a wood-fired iron stove to cook on and heat the kitchen (and, because of the trouble it was, an electric for quick use). In summer at noon, when the sun shone directly on the chimney, the fire could go out because the rise of warm air was blocked by the warm air from the sun. Getting the thing to work with the right amount of draft was tricky, anyway, requring lots of experience. So a chimney with an updraft is a double-edged thing.
- Grimmelshausen describes this in his opening chapter about his father’s hut.
I believe it’s different in Scandinavia, or at least Norway, but I may be wrong about that as well. Open fireplaces and cast iron stoves dominate all but stately homes.
the performance of these is a reason for their increasing use in new construction; though more a box and not so decorative but still costly.
to get heat through a day/night people might leave a fire smolder in another wood burning device. that is both inefficient use of the heat value of the wood and allows creosote to deposit in the flue which is a fire hazard. there are a number of ways this is a safety hazard.
with this masonry heater you build a real hot fire, that is a more efficient and safer burn, for a short time and it will give heat to the living space for a long time after the fire is out.
In a low-temperature furnace or fire (such as at a home), coal produces more CO than wood does. This is because of the combustion kinetics of the char in coal, and the greater quantity of char in coal than in wood. In a high-temperature furnace, the question is more difficult to answer. Nonetheless, wood fires can produce very high amounts of CO in poor combustion conditions.
My father grew up (and still lives) in farm country in Switzerland, and they had exactly what you describe. Except that the hole between the wall and the oven wasn’t called “Hölle”, I forget what they called it.
Our house was old but wasn’t a farmhouse so didn’t have one of those stone ovens.
In our part of Switzerland, it was called “fourneau en molasse”.
Sample picture of an old one (obviously hasn’t been cleaned in a while). Notice the bench. Also a small rectangular hole to put things in to bake (like a loaf of bread I suppose?) This one doesn’t have the little hidey-hole between the oven and the wall.
Thanks for the laurels, but I’m afraid that’s only partially true. Since I only know one second language, English, I can only compare the German and English Wikpedia articles, and my impression is:
on American and general phenomenons, the English articles are usually longer;
on German cultural/ historical etc. phenomenons, the German articles are usually longer;
and on general science articles, it can be quite startling to see the different viewpoints and way of descriptions. E.g. look at ten different, major plants for example - what is described about them in each language is different. German articles mention Semmelweis and Pettenkoffer for Hygiene, which English considers minor or doesn’t mention. Earthquake scales has one major scale in German and two competing scales in English, and so on.
So taking a wiki walk by following the link to another language version is very interesting.
I think this depends on the age of the property. Lots of swedish homes built in the 19th-20th century have a kakelugn in several rooms, just like middle-class british homes of the same period would have a small coal grate in several rooms. They are common even in apartment buildings. Realtors just love them because they add a few percent to the price of the house.
If you do a google image search, you can see plenty of grand ones, as well as plenty which just amount to a fairly plain 2-metre ceramic cylinder in the corner of a room, with a firebox the size of a toaster.
You still see these quite a lot in parts of middle and eastern Europe, I remember as a kid (I’m only in my twenties) the best thing after skiing and dinner was to put a blanket on top of one of these and play card/bord games while we waited for the cakes/pies/other pastries that were cooked in the oven to be ready for consumption.
All this was in the nineties and the naughties, though I must say few people actually used it as heating. Most places had central heating as well, but kept these for the baking etc… I think (altough not positive) people still put them in their new houses if they have a large basement or the like that they use for largisch gatherings; some distant relatives did this in their large garage.